In this life, we will be confronted with challenges, and how we react to those challenges defines who and what we really are. This thus signifies that those who try to escape their challenges, problems, and issues with drugs, drink, or mindless entertainment, rather than confronting them, will not only not make progress, where they need to, but are clearly not accomplishing what they were set upon earth to overcome and to accomplish.
While some problems that we are confronted with, seem insurmountable, it has to be noted that as Rome was not built in one day, we thereby cannot resolve everything that confronts us in a short period of time, either. For some of us, overcoming what we need to overcome, will require us to develop a certain skill set that will permit us to utilize this to make the progress that we need to make. For others, it may necessitate the help and aid of friends, and so on. Each of what we have to face is personal to our own cause, and therefore it is essentially up to us as individuals, to take on the responsibility to do what we need to do in order to conquer what has to be conquered.
Regrettably, there are a fair amount of people who in one form or another, simply give up, whether they desire to admit to such or not. Thus then, those who give up, even to the point of death, do so in the wrongful belief that by dying or conducting themselves in a way that they have surrendered to that which they believe that they cannot overcome, become the very same, that have placed themselves in the somewhat unenviable position that having failed at their task, they will have the burden of tackling that task, again, until such a time that they eventually pass their test.
Indeed, there are far too many people who seem to believe that drinking alcohol or taking illicit drugs will solve their problems, or if not, to successfully mask such, but just as in the movie, Groundhog Day those that will not pass the level that they are at, are doomed to face it, again and again, until they do pass. So too, those who believe death will bring them a full release from their troubles, aches, and problems that this world has presented to them, have it partially right, and partially wrong. What death releases us from is the constrictions and restrictions of this world and our relationship to it, but what it does not release us from, is our character flaws that we have not amended or corrected.
To believe that death brings a disappearance of all that ails us, is wrong-headed, for death is merely the transitioning from the raiment that covers our spirit, to pure spirit, but when that spirit is not in harmony with God, it must correct itself, or it will not be able to ascend to those heights, that only those that are truly enlightened have reached. This means that one way or another, one dimension or another, we must assert ourselves to be what we were created to be, or else cycle through that which will not present us with everlasting peace until we resolve that this, above all, we must have